Some thoughts in the aftermath of one of the more entertaining Super Bowls in recent years:

I’m no football defensive coordinator or head coach, but it’s beyond me why the Steelers, ahead by 13 points with 10 minutes to play, dropped their defensive backs off the line of scrimmage 20 yards, in effect, allowing the Cardinals to score in under three minutes to climb back in the game. The only thing a prevent defense is good for is preventing the team that employs it from winning, which it nearly did.

Most exciting play in this Super Bowl, or any Super Bowl – the 100-yard interception return by Pittsburgh at the end of the first half that looked like it might take the wind out of Arizona’s sails.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Best halftime show in years.

Biggest Super Bowl commercial surprise: The absence of ads selling domestic automobiles. The Big Three really are broke.

Best Super Bowl commercial: The Budweiser Clydesdale who, to the Motown tune Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, goes in search of the mare of his dreams, the world’s greatest dancing horse, who works in the circus.

Worst Super Bowl commercial: the ad that advised against sending your girl boxed flowers because you never know what they’re going to say; in this instance, the talking flowers belittled the woman who received them, in front of her office colleagues, telling her she was ugly, overweight and that no one wanted to see her naked. How did such an obnoxious, politically incorrect ad make it onto celluloid?

One of the better Super Bowls, despite too many penalties, especially of the 15-yard variety – what happened to the officials letting the players play on the game’s biggest stage? The game was in doubt right down to the last play. Kudos to the Cardinals for their solid playoff run (something the Detroit Lions can only dream of doing), and kudos to the Steelers for being the first franchise to win six Super Bowl Championships.

This was an exercise at my writers group. From the photograph of a staircase with a grandfather clock at its foot we were tasked with writing a flash piece.

America's calling, Harry Truman.

Harry, you'd know what to do.

The world is turnin' round
and losin' lots of ground,

Oh, Harry is there something we can do
to save the land we love?

― Robert Lamm

Last night, as I watched the second presidential debate, it occurred to me it had been many years since last I voted for a candidate instead of against one candidate or the other. This introspection resulted in my conclusion that neither candidate won the debate, although clearly, in my mind, one had certainly lost.

Although both candidates orate this election year is all about necessary change, the media has made this election historic for the wrong reason: initially the possibility of the first woman in the White House, now, potentially, the first African American to assume the presidency.

Last night, both candidates were full of campaign rhetoric, but I imagine, like those who have gone before them, once the election is over, the rhetoric will quickly be forgotten and it will be business as usual in all branches of government. If I sound disenchanted it's because I am. Worse, my disenchantment of the last twenty or so years has turned to despondency and fear for the future of this once great country.

Yes: Once great. That our current president, as well as both those who endeavor to follow in his footsteps, say it is great does not make it so. We have lost our way. The recent disaster on Wall Street is but one illustration on a long list of examples of how lost we really are. This is not the America my father fought for in World War II; nor is it the America our founding fathers envisioned more than two-hundred years ago.

Perhaps my skeptism and cynicism is because of my age, but I can't help but feel that, for at least the last twenty years, candidates seek the nation's highest office not because they are compelled to make a difference, to right the wrongs in the world or of their predecessor, to represent We, the People, but instead for their own desire for power and for the spotlight. The winner of this election will, sadly, assume the White House thinking they were the candidate of choice when in fact it is because the voters viewed him as the lesser of two evils, because we hoped that this year (finally!) his rhetoric will be more than mere rhetoric, because we believed his lies more than his opponent's. Indeed, we will cast our votes based largely on a leap of faith. Because we had to choose one.

In January, either John McCain or Barack Obama will hold their first State of the Union Address and by the end of 2010, at the latest, my despondency will deepen as either McCain continues to govern as Bush did, in favor of Corporate America, or Obama proves ineffective or his promises turn out to be empty rhetoric.

Truly, the change that seems to be the center of this election but scratches the surface of the change this country needs in order to survive. Our two-party system, indeed, our entire election system is archaic. My belief in the power of the non-vote as a means of voicing displeasure of the current election process falls on deaf ears.

My inbox is full of email from both parties bashing the other. We need to beat the Demcratics. We need to take power from the Republicans. No talk of bipartisanship, of working together for the good of the country. It's all about party ― Democrats versus Republicans.

What this country needs more than change is revolution. Our election process needs to be revamped to provide independent candidates a chance at winning the White House. Only with Independents can we break this vicious cycle of infighting between the two major parties. But alas, change that great won't happen in my lifetime, nor is it likely to happen before this country falls, and for a fall it is heading. Our way of life in this country is already changing, the result of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the poor esteem with which the rest of the global community holds us, an ailing environment, the rising cost of healthcare, the diminishing middle class that spins its wheels faster and faster in pursuit of an American Dream turned nightmarish. Our elected officials and voters alike continue to stick their heads in the sand. Candidates run on empty rhetoric and voters vote not because we feel our vote counts or will make a difference, but because it is our civic duty. How long before our flickering hope is extinguished?

I'm not alone in my lost faith that any one candidate is different from another, that any elected official holds my interests, the interests of the country, the global community, planet earth, above their own.

Harry, is there something we can do to save this land we love?

Impact Times offers one-page articles on a host of topics, from politics to current events, business, literature, art, and more. This format makes reading informative, educational, and rewarding. The autumn edition of Impact Times is available online. Please see my contribution on the editor's page as well as two more on the articles page, along with the many other fine articles.

I have the privilege of working from home three days each week, and so I often receive company news a day or so late. Yesterday, a Tuesday, I made my customary trek into the office – a drive of nearly thirty miles – and was sipping my first cup of coffee while easing into my workday when my colleague arrived. After settling herself, she came by my desk to ask if I'd heard what had happened on Friday of the previous week. Our supervisor had gotten an early start on her vacation this week by working from home herself and logging off early on Friday. I shook my head.

"A man from corporate arrived last Wednesday and at noon, Friday, Joan and everyone in HR were told to pack their personal belongings and were escorted out of the building."

I blinked my eyes at my colleague, not knowing what to say. Finally, I nodded and thanked her for telling me the sobering news.

This is the way Corporate America works in the twenty-first century. No notice was sent; I'm left to receive the news from a colleague. No acknowledgement of Joan and her team's contribution over the years. It's like they never existed. It's happened before that I learned of a colleague's departure from an email returned to me as undeliverable. Shocking. This is not what made America great; but then today America is not so great.

Today all is driven by bottom line. Like war, which we've made so clean – no longer does a soldier have to look into the eyes of the man he must kill or allow to kill him – we in Corporate America are but faceless names. Like the Baltic states in the aftermath of World War II became the pawns on the chessboard to appease Communist Russia, we, too, with a mere sweep of a hand, can be removed from the playing board. Already my colleagues in the field with whom and for whom I work are asking me for direction and I can provide none because I have not yet been advised. Indeed, I haven't even been officially told. And, based on experience, I will never be officially told. Here today, gone tomorrow, no acknowledgement. Like they never existed. Cowards.

And this morning I'm wondering how much more difficult my job will become in the coming months because HR, who provided a semblance of orientation to new employees, is gone, and so it will now fall to me and my team to, in addition to our other responsibilities, coach and teach those in the field the policies and procedures intended to help them to help us help them. No doubt our division's HR responsibilities will now be carried out from corporate, in Dallas, halfway across the country from Michigan, by people who have no idea what goes on in our division.

Last week four women were let go to save maybe $110 or $120K. They expect loyalty from the ranks but show none in return. Joan, who hired in about the same time I did more than ten years ago, was told to pack her personal belongings under the watchful eye of security and escorted out of the building to the parking lot like a criminal. How humiliating, to be treated like that. And she and her staff with her were probably told not to take it personally. Just a business decision, made by someone looking to cut costs to improve the bottom line in a depressed economy. How, even in the short-term, will this benefit the company let alone the nation's economy?

This week corporate will, with the money they procured last week at the expense of Joan and her staff's livelihoods, undoubtedly hire a new executive to add to our already top heavy organizational structure. Will it turn the company around, make us more profitable? Unlikely.

And next week, or next month or next year, perhaps it will be my team's turn: I will be told I need to be in the office on Friday (a day I typically work from home), and a man will approach me at my desk around noon to tell me to pack my personal belongings, while he watches to make sure I don't take anything that doesn't belong to me – like a box of paperclips – and afterward he will escort me out of the building.

It's the American way.

Sister, I hear you laugh
my heart fills full up
Keep me please
Sister, when you cry
I feel your tears running down my face
Sister, Sister will you keep me?

― Dave Matthews

I read recently in The New York Times that more books exist in print today than there are readers in this nation.

At first I thought that was a testament to the shrinking number of readers in this country; indeed, this one-time popular leisure activity seems far down the list of many Americans, behind TV, DVD rentals, computer games, cell phone conversations, text messaging, surfing the Internet, responding to email via one's Blackberry ― or most any activity that doesn't require someone to be "connected" to someone or something, and let's face it, reading is anything but a social endeavor. Then I thought of the fast-growing self-publishing industry and fledging e-book industry, as well as a host of other self-professed "new model" publishing companies, most requiring a sizeable investment from the author.

No other nation in the world is as inpatient as ours, as evidenced by our immediate gratification mentality. No one saves anymore for that new appliance or piece of furniture, not when we can put it on a credit card and bring it home with us today, and I think that spills over into the mentality of many emerging writers. I've been associated with enough writers' forums to know that many endure the rejection of maybe five or six agents or publishers before deciding to self-publish (Dr. Seuss and J. K. Rowling endured dozens of rejections). Not that I'm against self-publishing ― many notable authors self-started their way to fame, including Mark Twain, John Grisham, Walt Whitman, Beatrix Potter, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Elliot, Carl Sandberg, Gertrude Stein, Deepak Chopra, Upton Sinclair, D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, E.E. Cummings (Mr. Cummings never had his name officially changed his name to lowercase and although he often signed his name in lowercase, his preference was for the more formal spelling), Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood and Tom Clancy ― all folks with true literary talent.

Today, anyone with a valid credit card can see their work in print, whether it deserves to be or not. Yet there are many unscrupulous predators willing to take anyone's money. They make their money upfront, preying on unsuspecting writer wannabes who've yet to learn their trade or fill their writer's toolbox with the necessary tools to be good ― and these predators continue to make money by selling marketing schemes they claim are designed to get your book into the hands of an eagerly awaiting public but which best serve to part writers from their hard earned money.

It's interesting to note that the average number of copies a self-published author makes is 150, 64% to family and friends ― not enough, in most cases, to cover their initial investment let alone any ongoing investment. Many authors are happy with this, a coffee table product, a legacy which they can leave their family, but it makes it difficult for the rest of us to be taken seriously. Most agents and publishing houses receive as many as 300 queries each month ― too many to which to respond with even a rejection letter, and so writers are now left to assume rejection from being ignored (even as the agent or publisher often discourages writers from making simultaneous submissions), and there is something sadly wrong with that. To take the time to tailor a query letter specific to an agent or publisher requires time and effort and in my mind deserves at least an acknowledgement, even if that acknowledgement comes in the form of a standard form letter of rejection.

Like the music industry, which discourages originality (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin I fear would, today, be turned away), the publishing industry rewards the formulaic while eschewing literary art ― emerging writers are encouraged to write at a sixth-grade level.

Dan Brown may have turned a fascinating story into the world's all-time biggest best seller, but while Joseph Conrad and Charles Dickens will continue to be discussed in creative writing courses 100 years from now, Brown, I suspect, will be relegated a footnote not for his talent but instead for his "saleability."

If profits of the publishing industry are driven by, at most, a half-dozen names, we have the publishing industry to thank for that, but enough blame remains for the self-publishing and print on demand publishers for an industry that annually loses money as well as for the struggles of many talented writers who truly deserve to see their work in print.

― JCG/August 2008

Like all parents, mine lied to me about Santa Claus. I don't recall exactly how old I was when I learned the truth about old St. Nick (and in short order the myths behind the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy also fell), but several years later, after I'd attained the lofty wise age of maybe fourteen, I took it upon myself to pass along that same truth to a younger cousin, who was at the time maybe six or seven. Woe to me for choosing Christmas Eve when all of the adults were out of the room. Who can say what causes a teen to do what they do? But a lie is a lie, right? If we strive to do what is right for the sake of right, perhaps I was struggling to wrap my mind around this wrong for right's sake. I recall Tom's broken face, the fear in his eyes as they teared up before he fled the room, and I immediately regretted being the harbinger of truth and justice. Moments later he returned with his mom and dad (my aunt and uncle), who proceeded to read me the riot act. And then I had to listen to my own parents ― they who had initiated the lie to me so many years ago.

At my cousin's funeral a few weeks ago, I recalled that event from our youth and wondered if he ever had, and whether, by age 44, he had forgiven me. Tater tots perhaps. But now I'll never know.

The latest issue of Impact Times is online. Please see my contributions on the editor's column as well as the articles tabs.

Webster's defines idol as an image regarded as an object of worship; a false god; a person or thing blindly or excessively adored; something visible but lacking substance.

They might add to those definitions: See also American Idol, Fox T.V.

I can in good conscience say I've never seen this popular show, but I've seen enough trailers (who can miss them?) to know how important attaining the status of American idol is to these idol wannabes. The panel of judges, who think nothing of ridiculing the markedly less talented, in turn, heap words of praise along with looks of unabashed adulation upon the talented hopefuls while the live audience voices their approval. Those talents who make the cut to the next level often scream and weep out of sheer ecstasy. They are driven to be worshipped, adored by the masses, even if that image lacks the substance of reality.

As I sit writing these words this afternoon, a Google search of American Idol brought up the following four news items — all posted within the last five hours:

• American Idol alum Katharine McPhee latest to split with record label (Chicago Tribune)
• Getting in shape for American Idol (Chicago Tribune)
• Better Than Carrie Underwood: American Idol the Best of All Time? (National Ledger)
• Simon says: Cowell tells why the best is yet to come (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Now, I appreciate a good entertainer — an actor or a singer — as much as anyone, and as much as I value a good movie, good music, a novel or a work of art. I've been moved to laughter, to tears, to joy by all of the above, but to affix the word "idol" to the winner of this talent show, no matter how much talent they may possess, I find not only offensive but downright vulgar, nearly pornographic.

American Idol plays off everything that is wrong with America: our fascination with and addiction to fame. Are our lives so devoid of the things that matter — career, family, spirituality, community — that we must escape our reality because of our perception of the aforementioned as ordinary?

It goes without saying that our troubled youth today aspire to follow in the footsteps of former pop star Britney Spears and Hilton heiress Paris Hilton, both whom we created. The former's fame has brought her only ruin, while the latter's resulted in jail time, even as their falls from fame brought ridicule to them while, in the former's case, it fueled her demise. Fame does not bring happiness to the unhappy; it merely makes their unhappiness, perhaps for a time, a little easier to bear or hide from.

It's been said that giving to charity eases our conscience, and while I won't deny the necessary role entertainment holds in our society, ours has taken it past the level of diversion or distraction from the reality of the homeless, the starving, the infirm, to the point of nescience. The aim of any society should be to acknowledge these sufferings of real substance and to do something about them, not turn from them, pretending they don't exist by losing itself in false images.

Frankly, I'm mighty tired of hearing people refer to global warming as a political agenda for alarmists like Al Gore. The simple truth is, it's easy to debunk something in which one does not want to believe by calling it alarmist propaganda, but oftentimes, especially in this country, the only way to get the attention of the powers that be is to sound an alarm. And sometimes, the obverse is true:

In 1955, at the height of the Cold War when America feared a first-strike nuclear attack from the U.S.S.R., the U.S. Office of Civil Defense produced a short film, About Fallout, to debunk popular beliefs about nuclear fallout. This film featured a segment on how to simply wash and wipe contaminated foods to make them safe for eating after a nuclear attack. Today we would find the information in that film laughable; yet in 1963, this film's success prompted an expanded version that attempted to dispel many of the common myths and fallacies about radioactive fallout. I wonder if any of the survivors of the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bought into any of this propaganda distributed by the U.S. Office of Civil Defense.

So what if the warnings regarding global warming are but political propaganda? Our current administration has been all about creating crises where none exist — was not George Bush's alarmist talk about a cache of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq propaganda? — all the while avoiding impending real crises altogether.

I read today that "Cap-and-trade policies for limiting carbon dioxide emissions can substantially increase the bottom line for many companies, even as they increase costs for customers with no discernable benefit for the environment or the economy."

While this is true, the obverse argument can also be made — that doing nothing with respect to limiting carbon dioxide emissions can substantially increase the bottom line for many companies, specifically the oil companies who are enjoying record profits as a result of increased costs at the gas pumps (which doesn't benefit the economy either), and also with no discernable benefit for the environment. The car companies, too, benefit from no limit on emissions. They claim they can't engineer a more efficient internal combustion engine. Is that a fact, or merely a ploy to maintain the status quo and avoid investing in the future, instead holding onto their profits? Yet all of this, and whether global warming is a political ploy, is immaterial when one considers that fossil fuel is a limited resource!

I read from this same source that, "Similarly, journalists and major news outlets sell more (copy) by reporting sensationalist headlines than by carefully examining the evidence for such claims."

This argument is baseless when one considers the American pubic is far more concerned over the latest diet fads, plastic surgery — we fear dying and the aging process more than we fear terrorism or global warming (as evidenced by the escalating number of big gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers on the roads) — sports, the latest technological gimmicks and gadgets, and the fall of celebrities. Britney Spears' name in any given sensationalist headline is guaranteed to sell more copies of any magazine or newspaper than one with global warming. And the Nielson ratings prove that most Americans would rather watch the latest reality TV show than something about the environment on the Discovery channel.

Sadly, Americans want to keep their heads in the sand where the environment is concerned, because it's easier to ignore a crisis, pretending it doesn't exist, than it is to change our lifestyle. The American economy is more important than saving the planet. This is the way it's always been and so we see no reason to change. Only when the Arctic icecap completely melts and the sea levels rise to reach our bottom lip will we say, "We couldn't have known this was going to happen," when all along the evidence pointed at the possibility.

We've known for a half-century or longer that the world's fossil fuel supply was limited. Thirty years ago, when the price of gas shot up to eighty cents a gallon (gasp!), we had cars that could get 36 mpg — Pintos, Chevettes, the original Honda Civic roller-skate, and, if I recall correctly, the Yugo, which boasted 40 mpg. Yet today, with a gallon of gas averaging more than $3, car companies rave about cars capable of 30 mpg — we've actually regressed with our automotive technology! But Americans need 200 horses to sit in gridlock averaging 4 mpg in L.A. rush hour traffic, when in 1911 they averaged 11 mpg in a horse and buggy. This is progress?

We've had thirty years to improve upon the internal combustion engine or develop a new type of energy and have done nothing precisely because no one, thirty years ago, was alarmed! People who then talked in quiet, reasonable tones were ignored. But today we call people like Al Gore alarmists with a political agenda. Which all leaves me to conclude that the human race, and our society particularly, is doomed because for anyone to believe that something bad can happen to our way of life, we must wait until it happens (as we did with 9/11 — all the information was there for us to foresee this event, but we chose to ignore it) in order to see it through hindsight. Only by then, like 9/12, it will be too late.